When to trade vit for def?

[pearlsea]

Im a lvl 20 taru pld, atm i currently use a shell shield for the vit+1 but im just wondering when does def become more importiant than vit or should i just go all out on the vit+ gear?

[Kittyneko]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

VIT = Max Damage you take in general
Def = Damage you take each hit
I don't know what else to say about it.

[kuu]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

Most pld will generally say you should start going more in vit by lvl 60+ when all your traits, skills, armor, etc, gives you natually higher def.

They're interrelated as it is, and I dont believe it's vit = simply max damage anymore. It was talked about since ancient times and there "offically" have been a few tweaks on the formula with updates over the years.

Keep with def till you get defender from warrior sj, 50, once you get defender, you've pretty much on a sliding scale.

[Tirrock]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

I personally went full out on VIT for my PLD (which is at 45 at the moment), and it's worked just fine for me. But I'm a bit...excessive on PLD when I play it. Like eating tacos from level 30+ excessive...

Kuu does have a very good point about DEF though. After a while, it suffers from diminishing returns.

The general consensus I heard when I was asking PLDs I knew about PLD gear was "VIT good". Most of them told me to keep the HQ eisen legs/feet until AF.
Mini-Edit/afterthought : I was asking about PLD gear from 30 to 60+, but not endgame, where PLDs just seem to prefer HP.

I'm not so sure about wearing -AGI gear, but I suppose at 20 it won't matter too much. There's a pretty nice shield coming up. Jeanne's Shield, or something like that. Level 28 I think.
Edit: Er. It's 38, my mistake. Oh well, Kite shield looks good. >_>

I'm actually pretty curious about what people on here think about VIT vs DEF. I guess I'll have to poke around this sub-forum a bit.

[pearlsea]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

^um... Genin Aspis lvl30 Def:6 Latent Effect: Attack: 5 that it? plus what activates the latent effect?

I was thinking of getting a -->Turtle Shield +1 lvl24 Def: 6 VIT: 4 AGI: -7 Vs. Water: 7 But how bad will the agi-7 hurt me?

[Uiruru]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

I personally would'nt recommnd turtle shield the Shield Blocks and Parry's you would have from the missing 7 agi would probally negate more dmg then the 4 vit you would gain would help, depending on race it might matter less but overall its best not to underestimate the damage you would negate from shield and parrying.

[Taskmage]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

From the sticky:

VIT : VIT is much more important than some people will have you believe. The damage formula can be found on this site: http://www.moonlight.gr.jp/~el/ffxi/ab_calc.html.en
Basically, there are two checks depending on Stats: STR<->VIT check and ATK<->DEF check. Obviously, the STR and ATK are the attacker's stats, the DEF and VIT are the victim's stats. Anyway, STR-VIT has a linear relationship, meaning that the amount of damage decreased for every VIT will be the same regardless of how much VIT you have. ATK-DEF is exponential (curved), meaning that after you reach a certain thresholed (when DEF=ATK generally), you will start to see "diminishing returns". This means when you have low defense, a +50 defense boost will decrease the damage you take noticeably. But when you have high defense, a +50 defense boost will not change the damage you receive much, if at all. High defense is very easy to achieve thanks to several abilities and food that increase DEF by a percentage: Sentinel, Defender, Rampart, Boiled Crab/Fish Mithkabob, etc... so after a while, VIT becomes more important than DEF. At lower levels, however, DEF is generally more important. Also keep in mind 2 VIT = 1 DEF, which helps a small amount.

So the answer seems to be to increase defense until you stop seeing significant gains, then focus on vit.

Think of it like this: (damage / defense) - vit = final damage
(No, this isn't the formula, just an illustration of the relationships.)

So let's say you're getting hit for 100 damage and have 2 def and 1 vit.

(100 / 2) - 1 = 49 damage

Defense is low at this point so if we increase defense by only one ...

(100/3) - 1 = ~32 damage

We get a significant reduction in damage. On the other hand if your defense is 10 and you increase it by 1 ...

(100/10) - 1 = 9 damage
(100/11) - 1 = 8 damage

The damage reduction is no longer greater than you would get from raising vit instead. At this point you should start prioritizing vit over def. Again, this is obviously an oversimplification. It's up to you to find the real numbers in the game that correspond to that point in the equation.

I could have sworn at some point Apple Pie or Icemage posted an illustration of this using real parsed numbers and equipment examples, but I can't find it. It may have been on Grendal-san's blog, but I've lost the link for that.

As for your shield question, agi affects your evasion and also your chance to shield block, parry, and be critically hit. The agi reduction from that shield is pretty huge. I think with that the damage mitigation from the increased vit will probably not outweigh the increased damage from lowering the effectiveness of your abilities.

[Armando]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

That damage formula is outdated and incorrect. Studio Gobli's has proven to be very accurate so far.

(D + fSTR) * PDIF

D = Weapon's DMG
fSTR = Function of your STR, the enemy's VIT, and your weapon's DMG. It's not as simple as subtraction, and starts to go up earlier on higher DMG weapons. Apple Pie gave the following formula to estimate your fSTR: (STR - VIT + 4)/4 where STR is your STR and VIT is the enemy's VIT. fSTR has a range of 0 to [8 + (D/9)].
PDIF = (ATK/DEF + Random). The range of the random numbers depends on your ATK/DEF ratio. ATK/DEF caps at 2; When ATK/DEF is capped, the random value can range from [-0.4, 0.4]. Thus, the highest value PDIF can have is 2.4. Criticals will add 1.0 to PDIF and allow it go as high as 3.0. The randomly generated numbers are distributed evenly, and thus so is damage. See this chart for how the range of the random number varies according to your ATK/DEF ratio: http://www5.sppd.ne.jp/grendal/FF11/pdif.gif

Basically, every ~4 points in STR or so will add 1 to your DMG, while Attack increases the multiplier. That being said, increasing either one will increase both mininum and maximum damage (and therefore average damage.) The converse holds true for VIT and Defense. Therefore, the question isn't "which," it's "how much?" I'd gladly sacrifice 2-4 Defense for 1 VIT. I've never been much of a fan of shell/turtle shields though. I don't like the -AGI on them, though I'm not sure how big of an effect they really have on shield/parry rates.

[Tirrock]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

I forgot how much of a math lesson trying to figure out maximum effectiveness on this game can be...

And yeah, I forgot to mention my reasoning behind why not to wear the -AGI shields... The massive -AGI will probably have big effects on how much damage you take, especially in the jungle - if what happened to me happens to you. For some reason, I could parry/shield block quite often against mandragoras (although rarely evade).

[dirtyclown]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

From my experience, Defense seems to cap out around 50-55. Around there you'll notice that most mobs hit you in the same damage range save for specials. With my old Pally I pretty much abandoned the high defense equipment for VIT at about 50, and it worked fine. Um..That shield that Tirrock was referring to might be the Jennet Shield. +1 VIT and 10-12 defense I think, can't remember. It's lvl 38 though. The lvl 28 one is the Kite Shield.

[Tirrock]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

Right you are, I remembered it wrong and didn't bother to double check on somepage.

Oops.

[bikkebakke]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

As a tarudin I say go all out on vit and hp.

[Gtsgunner]

Re: When to trade vit for def?

you know this really helped I tried looking for this in the monk forum but the thing is so big its hard to find a short and sweet answer and now I have it thxs =)

Btw I'd also Go for Vit and hp as a taru I find after a while defense means near nothing it seems =( This happened to me 60 + remind you around that level I pretty much didn't use defender unless I was getting hit for 100+ and right now Im still getting hit for 70ish when I use food unless its a new mob that I'm rather low to tank with